As a Family and Consumer Sciences Educator, I feel strongly about finding a balance between work-life and home-life, but since my work is about families, sometimes it all overlaps! When my daughters were growing up and I was working with community nutrition education, they would often ask about a container of food in the refrigerator: “Is this for home, or is this for work?”.  In January 2015, I’m bringing work home as I asked my co-spender to join me in the OSU Extension Manage Your Money Email challenge. I reassured my co-spender that I was not planning to share any of our personal financial information as it won’t be asked of any participants.

The risk of personally promoting and participating in a financial challenge is that it looks like we’ve got it all together!  We don’t have it all together, but as we work on areas where we need to improve, we will not forget to applaud the past choices and decisions where we got it right. Even for individuals and couples who have extensive experience and success with a household budget, it’s always a good idea to do a regular review, especially when there are changes in who is living in the house or with income or expenses.

Why I’m Bringing Work Home

One activity asks participants to think about money and values and agree or disagree with a list of statements. “Agree” or “Disagree,” what would you decide about these two statements?

• My household needs a better way to manage money.
• I feel good about how my household handles money.

If you agree, sign up today to bring this work to your home. (this link was removed after the 2015 online challenge. For current information, please email powers-barker.1@osu.edu)

“Meshing different styles of handling money doesn’t just happen because people love each other. It takes effective communication, time and effort” (Manage Your Money 1-2). I am pleased that my co-spender is joining me in this challenge to continue to mesh our spending styles! For those who do not have a co-spender, the material can easily be adapted for a single person.  For you parents of teenagers, the material focuses on adults, but you can introduce these and additional topics to working teens. The information and motivation to strengthen one’s personal finances is beneficial to all.